Actor Danny Glover visits Bladen County union hall

Glover met with members of UFCW 1208, which represents workers at the Smithfield Foods facility in Tar Heel - the largest pork processing plant in the world. (Source: WECT)

TAR HEEL, NC (WECT) -

Actor Danny Glover – best known for staring in The Color Purple and the Lethal Weapon series – visited Bladen County Wednesday in another role: activist.

Glover was on hand to meet with members of the local food workers union and to support the expansion of the chapter to neighboring Robeson County.

United Food & Commercial Workers Local 1208 was founded in 2008 to represent employees at the Smithfield Foods facility in Tar Heel, the largest pork processing plant in the world.

"Not only are you the beneficiaries of your great heroic struggle and the beneficiaries of your victory - but also your families, this community and the country," Glover said.

Chapter President Keith Ludlum explained the group is facing resistance in its efforts to organize workers at the Mountaire Farms chicken processing plant in Lumber Bridge.

"We don't believe we can have a fair election under the conditions the workers are facing now that the employer is doing: using local law enforcement to intimidate the workers, threatening workers with arrest, threatening workers with termination," he said.

Glover likens the Mountaire employees' fight to the struggle for civil rights in the 1950s and 60s.

"Just because North Carolina, like so many southern states, is a right to work state, that doesn't mean that you have a right to keep them from organizing a union," he said. "And that becomes where the real fight is right now."